Vietnam War Bibliography:

The Order of Battle Dispute and the Westmoreland Lawsuit

A dispute among U.S. intelligence officers, over the
strength of enemy forces in South Vietnam in 1967, had its first public exposure on
March 19, 1968, when The New York Times published an article based on documents
that Daniel Ellsberg had leaked to reporter Neil Sheehan. A more extended account,
written by former CIA analyst Samuel Adams, appeared
in 1975. The House Select Committee on Intelligence [the "Pike Committee"] held
hearings on the issue late in 1975 (see
U.S.
Intelligence Agencies and Activities: The Performance of the Intelligence Community).
It was the subject of a major television documentary in 1982, which led to
a major lawsuit in which General William Westmoreland sued
Samuel Adams, the CBS Television Network, and several CBS employees. The trial
in late 1984 and early 1985
led to the release of a huge amount of information about U.S. intelligence,
Communist forces, the background to the Tet Offensive, and other matters.

Sam Adams,
"Vietnam Cover-up: Playing War with Numbers", Harper's,
May 1975. Charges by a former CIA analyst that U.S. intelligence, especially
MACV intelligence, deliberately underestimated enemy strength in Vietnam
in order to maintain optimism about the way the war was going. The text has been placed on-line in
the Virtual Vietnam
Archive of the Vietnam Project, at Texas Tech University, as
pp. 158-171 of Reassessment
of U.S. Foreign Policy, a 1975 hearing before the
Subcommittee on Future Foreign Policy Research and Development,
House International Relations Committee.

Sam Adams, introduction by Col. David Hackworth,
War of Numbers:
An Intelligence Memoir. South Royalton, VT: Steerforth Press, 1994. 251 pp. The full text is available online
to paid subscribers of Questia. This extremely valuable book is seriously incomplete. Sam Adams
died in 1988, and his widow wisely decided to publish the manuscript as he had left it, rather than allow someone else to write new material to
fill in the gaps. See review by Peter Braestrup, in Washington Post Book World, 5/8/94, p. 8; the review is naively accepting of the
official version of the events.

"The Uncounted Enemy: A Vietnam Deception" was a documentary broadcast
by CBS on January 23, 1982. It was, in essence, the television presentation
of Samuel Adams' charges about distortion of military intelligence reporting.
It restated Adams' old charges in regard to the dropping of certain categories
from the official order-of-battle figures, and added new charges (based
on research Adams did after writing his 1975 article) that MACV figures
also underestimated the rate of NVA infiltration into South Vietnam for
about five months before the Tet Offensive. (See below
for full transcript.)
In establishing the sheer fact that intelligence estimates were deliberately
distorted, this program does pretty well. It presents a great deal of convincing
testimony from military intelligence officers who said that pressure from
their superiors to hold down the estimates of enemy strength had made them
compile official estimates that they themselves did not believe to be accurate.
However, the program does less well in analyzing the implications and consequences of the problem.
First, it assumes far too readily that if crucial information was omitted
from MACV official reports, then the White House was being kept in ignorance. CBS allowed its viewers to believe (once almost came out and told them
outright) that the President was ignorant of matters that in fact the President seems to have known about.
"The Uncounted Enemy" did not openly deny General
Westmoreland's claim
that the Tet Offensive had been in military terms an American victory,
but it discussed that claim in a fashion designed to raise doubts. This
was not proper; there had been good reason to doubt Westmoreland's claim
at the time he made it, in 1968, but by 1981, when this documentary was
made, the fact that Tet really had been an American military victory had
become clear.
Finally, there have been questions about the
fairness of the program.
Its makers, presumably noticing the obvious logic that a successful conspiracy
to distort intelligence reporting implies both a lot of conspirators who
will presumably attempt to conceal what they have done, and a lot of victims
who were successfully persuaded that the reports they were getting were
honest, tended to discount in advance those witnesses who said there had
been no distortion of intelligence reporting. CBS did not interview all
those it should have interviewed, and it did not give much air time to
those who said there had been no distortion of intelligence reporting.
Exercising this sort of judgment is generally considered a violation of
proper journalistic procedure. On the other hand, the evidence that has
emerged since the program was broadcast indicates that CBS's judgment was
good. The people who were given the most air time in the CBS program were
in fact the ones who were describing the events accurately.

Renata Adler,
Reckless Disregard: Westmoreland v. CBS et al.; Sharon
v. Time. New York: Vintage, 1988. 245 pp. Previously published as "Annals of Law: Two Trials," in the
New Yorker magazine, June 16, 1986, pp. 42-96, and June 23, 1986, pp. 34-83. From the brief glance I have taken at this book, Adler
seems to be seriously biased, and to lack an understanding of even the most elementary issues involved in the Westmoreland/CBS trial.

Burton Benjamin,
Fair Play: CBS, General Westmoreland, and How a Television Documentary Went Wrong. New York: Harper & Row, 1988. xviii, 218 pp.
This account is by the man CBS assigned to handle its internal investigation
of the documentary "The Uncounted Enemy". I have not seen it, but my impression
is that it is concerned more with the question of whether the documentary
followed proper journalistic procedures that with whether it was accurate.

Jake Blood,
The Tet Effect: Intelligence and the Public Perception of War.
New York and Abingdon: Routledge, 2005. xv, 212 pp.

David Boies,
Courting Justice: From NY Yankees v. Major League Baseball to Bush V. Gore 1997-2000. New York:
Hyperion/Miramax Books, 2004. 490 pp. A short section near the beginning (pp. 18-23) deals with Boies'
work as the lead attorney in CBS' defense against Westmoreland's libel suit.

Bob Brewin & Sydney Shaw,
Vietnam on Trial: Westmoreland vs.
CBS. New York: Atheneum, 1987. 414pp. The bulk of this book is a journalistic
account of the Westmoreland/CBS dispute, pretty competently done except
for a tendency simply to present the evidence, without enough analysis.
(There are, however, surprising inaccuracies in regard to the "Viet Cong
Infrastructure".) About 80 pages are devoted to interesting information
about the war that came out in the trial but had little connection with
the issues in the trial, especially dealing with the Ho Chi Minh Trail
and US efforts to block it, and with McNamara's pessimism about the war.

Richard M. Clurman,
Beyond Malice: The Media's Years of Reckoning,
rev. ed. New York: Meridian (New American Library), 1990. 325 pp. A large portion of the book
is devoted to Westmoreland v. CBS.

Thomas L. Cubbage III,
"Westmoreland vs. CBS: Was Intelligence Corrupted
by Policy Demands?" in Michael I. Handel, ed., Leaders and Intelligence
(London: Frank Cass, 1989), pp. 118-180. An anti-CBS view by a former military intelligence officer. There is also some discussion of this issue
in the introductory essay to the volume, Michael I. Handel, "Leaders and Intelligence" (pp. 3-39).

Karen Donovan,
v. Goliath: The Trials of David Boies. New York: Vintage, 2007. David Boies was the lead attorney for CBS in Westmoreland lawsuite. This
book has about thirty pages on the case.

James P. Finley [command historian for the U.S. Army Intelligence Center],
"Nobody Likes to be Surprised: Intelligence Failures," Military Intelligence Professional Bulletin 20:1 (January-March 1994), pp. 15-21, 40.
The text is online at
Hathi Trust.

Lt. Gen. Daniel O. Graham,
Confessions of a Cold Warrior. Fairfax, VA:
Preview Press, 1995. 228 pp. Graham held a senior position in MACV intelligence in late 1967. The
part of this book at which I have looked, the discussion of the 1967 dispute over
enemy strength estimates and the 1968 Tet Offensive (pp. 51-57), appears to me to be nonsense.

Gains Hawkins,
"Vietnam Anguish: Being Ordered to Lie,"Washington Post, November 14, 1982, C1, C2. Colonel Hawkins
was head of the Order of Battle Branch at the Comobined Intelligence Center, Vietnam (CICV) for most of 1967.

C. Michael Hiam,
Who the Hell Are We Fighting? The Story of Sam Adams and the Vietnam Intelligence
Wars. Hanover, New Hampshire: Steerforth Press, 2006. 326 pp. Reprinted with a new Foreword by Thomas Powers,
and under a new title,
A Monument to Deceit: Sam Adams and the Vietnam Intelligence Wars. ForeEdge (University Press of New England), 2014.

There is a pretty favorable
review
by Robert Sinclair in the CIA journal Studies in Intelligence, 50:4 (November 2006), pp. 1-9.

Ed Joyce,
Prime Times, Bad Times. New York: Doubleday, 1988. xii, 561 pp. Edward M. Joyce was President of CBS News during the trial of the Westmoreland
lawsuit. He is more interested in procedural issues than with the truth or falsehood of the broadcast.

Bruce Jones,
War without Windows. New York: Vanguard, 1987. xvi,
302 pp. By a junior officer who worked in military intelligence in Saigon 1967-68.

Don Kowet,
A Matter of Honor. New York: Macmillan, 1984. 317pp.
This is a full-length attack on the CBS documentary "The Uncounted Enemy."
Kowet's lack of knowledge of the issues dealt with in the documentary,
when added to his biases, make the book pretty worthless.

"Masters
of the Intelligence Art: John F. Stewart, Jr. and the Vigilant Eye of the Storm." Published
electronically on the U.S. Army Military Intelligence Center
Huachuca History Program
web site. 35 pp. Stewart (and the author of this article) sided with Westmoreland
in the dispute over the 1967 estimates of the strength of enemy forces in Vietnam (see below for
Stewart's testimony as a witness for Westmoreland, in Westmoreland's suit against
CBS). Stewart later was involved with Urgent Fury
and Just Cause. The biggest portion of the article deals with Desert Storm.

Edwin E. Moise,
"Why Westmoreland Gave Up." Pacific Affairs 58:4
(Winter 1985-86), pp. 663-673. If you browse the
Internet through an institution that has subscribed to JSTOR, you can access
the text
directly or go through the
JSTOR
Pacific Affairs browse page.

Edwin Moïse,
The Myths of Tet: The Most Misunderstood Event of the Vietnam War. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas,
2017. xi, 276 pp. Most of chapters 2 and 3, and considerable portions of other chapters, are devoted to the order of battle
and the disputes about it. Table of Contents

Norman L. Rosenberg,
Protecting the Best Men: An Interpretive History
of the Law of Libel. Chapel Hill: North Carolina Press, 1986.

M. Patricia Roth,
The Juror and the General. New York: William
Morrow, 1986. 300 pp. By one of the jurors at the trial of Westmoreland v. CBS, et. al.

Joshua Rovner,
Fixing the Facts: National Security and the Politics of Intelligence. Ithaca: Cornell University Press,
2011. ix, 263 pp. An analysis, which looks quite convincing to me, of the reasons why policymakers sometimes
politicize intelligence, and sometimes just ignore intelligence analyses that contradict their views. Much of Chapter 4,
"The Johnson Administration and the Vietnam Estimates" (pp. 49-88), deals with the Order of Battle dispute.

Neil Sheehan,
"U.S. Undervalued Enemy's Strength Before Offensive," New York Times, March 19, 1968, pp. 1, 3. Based
on documents that Daniel Ellsberg (later to become famous in the "Pentagon Papers" case) leaked to Sheehan.

Mike Wallace, with Gary Paul Gates,
Between You and Me: A Memoir. New York: Hyperion, 2005. 292 pp. Wallace's account of his role as
chief correspondent for "The Uncounted Enemy," and as a defendant in Westmoreland's lawsuit, is on pp. 187-203.

James J. Wirtz,
The Tet Offensive: Intelligence Failure in War.
Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991. x, 290 pp. This book contains some useful
information, but basically it is a whitewash of the intelligence failure.

James J. Wirtz,
"Intelligence to Please? The Order of Battle Controversy
During the Vietnam War", Political Science Quarterly 106:2 (Summer 1991), pp. 239-63. Starts out with the misunderstanding
that "the Order of Battle debate . . . was driven by organizational definitions of who constituted
an enemy combatant" (p. 241), and goes on to the suggestion, which I regard as preposterous, that the events of the Tet Offensive
suggest that MACV estimates of enemy combat forces had actually been too large (p. 253). Reprinted in Loch K. Johnson and James J. Wirtz, eds.,
Strategic Intelligence: Windows into a Secret World (Los Angeles: Roxbury, 2004), pp. 183-197.

The Virtual Vietnam
Archive of the Vietnam Project, at Texas Tech University, has placed online the full texts of
many documents related to the Westmoreland lawsuit against CBS et al. (both declassifed
intelligence reports and other documents dating from the
war, and documents generated in in connection with the lawsuit). The items
listed individually below represent only part of what is available.
The best way I know of to search the collection is to go to the
Virtual Vietnam
Archive Quick Search Page, from there go to "Advanced Search," choose "Larry Berman Collection
(Westmoreland v. CBS)" among the options offered for the "Collection Title" field, and then
enter other terms as appropriate in the "Subject/Keyword", "Document Title", or other fields.

David Boies et. al.,
Memorandum in Support of Defendant CBS's Motion
to Dismiss and for Summary Judgment, 3 vols. Submitted May 23, 1984,
to the United States District Court, Southern District of New York, in
the case of General William C. Westmoreland against CBS Inc., et. al.,
82 Civ. 7913 (PNL). This memorandum in three bound volumes contains a great
deal of information, and full texts of sworn affadavits from various witnesses,
in regard to the charge by CBS that US military intelligence in Vietnam
deliberately falsified figures on enemy troops strength, especially in
1967. Appendix B, Affidavits Referred to in CBS's Memorandum, has been placed online:

pp.
B-140 to B-177. Affidavits of William W. Cover, Howard Daniel III (this one is very
interesting; Daniel was a computer analyst who supervised data processing operations
at CICV for more than two and a half years beginning in early 1966), John I. Dickerson, Michael F. Dillay, and Aaron Donner.

pp.
B-178 to B-208, and B-245 to B-259. Affidavits of David Elliott, Joseph A. Fackovec, Michael Fraboni, Dwain Gatterdam, and
Gains B. Hawkins (who had been
responsible for producing the Order of Battle in 1967). Pages B-209 to B-244, the
significant part of which was the Affidavit of David Halberstam, appear to be missing.

Appendix B, "Important Documents Cited
in Support of Plantiff's Opposition to Defendant's Motion"

Table
of Contents, pp. B-1 to B-37. Includes transcript
of the broadcast of "The Uncounted Enemy (JX 1, pp. B-2 to B-29),
a melodramatic print ad for the broadcast (JX 385, p. B-31), and a transcript of
discussion of the show on the CBS Morning News January 21, 1982 (JX 903, pp. B-33 to B-37).

pp. B-273 to B-318. Includes
MACV Briefing on Enemy Order of Battle, 11/24/67 (JX 277, pp. B-274 to B-282); JX 287; Graham and Hamscher to Helms, mid-April 1968,
disagreeing with the current CIA position on the order of battle (JX 312);
Excerpt from the Pentagon Papers, USVNR, Book 5, IV.C.6(b), pp. 201-204, on the briefing given to McNamara when he visited Saigon in
July 1967 (JX 317);
George Allen, memo for the record on VC order of battle, 7/5/67 (JX 377);

pp. B-368 to B-415.
Includes Westmoreland to Wheeler and Sharp 9 May 1968 on Order of Battle methodology,
in which Westmoreland resisted the idea of counting the self-defense militia
(pp. B-373 to B-375).

pp. B-416 to B-455. Includes
"USMACV - JGS RVNAF Estimate of the Strength of Viet Cong Irregular Forces in SVN," 18 May 1967,
presenting greatly increased estimates of Guerrilla, Self-Defense, and Secret Self-Defense forces, sent by McChristian to Komer 21 May 1967
(JX 893), and an evaluation of that study done by CIA at Komer's request soon after (JX 893A).

Deposition of Donald W. Blascak. In late 1966, he was at CIA under George Allen and George Carver,
working on order of battle. February 3, 1985, pages
1-34,
35-81. February 4, 1985, pages
82-124,
125-157.

Deposition of Daniel A. Friedman. He was in the Army May 1967 to May 1969 rising to SP4. He was in
Vietnam November 1967 to November 1968, in 3d Platoon [eight APCs], D Troop, 17th Armored Cavalry, 199th
Light Infantry Brigade, in III Corps. Later became a member of VVAW, and of VVA.
December 13, 1984.
1-46,
47-83.

Deposition of General Robert N. Ginsburgh. He was an Air Force officer, who from mid 1966
to the beginning of 1969, had a double job, working both on the NSC staff under Walt Rostow, and
on the Joint Staff. Before that he had served under Rostow in the State Department, on the
Policy Planning Council. October 18, 1984, pages
1-45,
46-81.

Deposition of Michael B. Hankins. December 5, 1983, pages
1-40,
41-61,
62-108. Hankins was
drafted in March 1966. After basic training and advanced individual training, he went to
Officer Candidate School at Fort Benning, August 1966 to February 1967. He then went to the
Army Intelligence School at Fort Holabird, Maryland. He was sent to Vietnam in June 1967, and was
assigned to the Order of Battle Section at CICV, under Lt. Col. Parkins. He was there until his
tour (and his service in the Army) ended in November 1968, working on NVA infiltration.

[Col. Gains Hawkins],
"The Enemy Order of Battle in the Republic of Vietnam -- 1966-67." (Westmoreland v. CBS, Exhibit 1839.) A draft memoir,
typescript with a lot of modifications marked in by hand, written by Col. Hawkins in 1980.
pp 1-41,
pp 42-58

Affidavit
of Norman R. House, August (25?), 1983, 8 pp. An Army intelligence officer (recently
transferred from the Air Force), he arrived in Vietnam in August 1967, joined the Estimates
Branch of CIIED, and was assigned to find evidence that setbacks were forcing the VC in
IV Corps to revert to phase I guerrilla warfare. When he reported the evidence didn't
show that, he was transferred out. He became chief of Ground OB for I Corps at CICV,
where there was pressure not to recognize new enemy units.

Affidavit
of Marshall W. Lynn, March (23?), 1983, 5 pp. An analyst of enemy logistical units
at the OB section of MACV intelligence, who in late August or early September 1967,
was ordered to lower his estimates.

James Meacham. A naval officer who became chief of OB Studies at CICV in late fall of 1967.

Deposition of Col. David Morgan. He was in military intelligence from 1955 to 1968. He had been
primarily a Soviet analyst until his one-year tour in Vietnam, in J-2 estimates and CICV, January 1967
to January 1968. June 4, 1984, pages
1-37,
38-66,
67-115,
116-139.

Deposition of Gregory G. Rushford. Rushford was an investigator for the House Select
Committee on Intelligence (Pike Committee) in 1975 and 1976, when the committee
investigated the order of battle dispute. November 14, 1983, pages
1-50,
51-94,
95-140. November 15, 1983, pages
141-189,
190-214,
215-242. January 9, 1984, pages
245-278,
279-298.

Affidavit
of Joseph C. Stumpf, April 18, 1984, 7 pp. A CIA analyst, who went to Vietnam
in December 1967 to check on MACV figures on VC recruitment, and found that the MACV
figures were being forced downward by command pressure.

Deposition of John Barrie Williams. September 27, 1983, pages
1-49,
50-90,
?-138,
139-173. Williams,
an Army intelligence officer, first went to Vietnam August 1964 to August 1965 as an intelligence adivisor
to the ARVN 21st Infantry Division; he was a Rach Gia. From February 1966 to mid 1969 he was an
analyst on the Vietnam desk at DIA. In mid 1970 he went back to Vietnam, initially in the
2d Battalion, 525th Military Intelligence Group, at Nha Trang; in December he became commander of the
4th Battalion of the 525th Group, at Can Tho in the
Mekong Delta. In mid 1971 he was transferred to Thailand, where he worked for two years.

October 25, 1984. Pages
1362-1401
(interim summations by both sides; direct examination of Commander Robert H. Heon,
who was chief of the current intelligence section of MACV
intelligence from February or March 1967 to February 1968);
1402-1443
(Heon, direct and cross-examination);
1444-1479,
(George Godding, who as a colonel was chief of production for MACV intelligence for
much of 1967, direct examination);
1480-1519
(Godding, direct and cross-examination);
1520-1533
(Godding cross-examination).

October 30, 1984. Pages
1722-1752
(discussion between attorneys and the judge, and statements by attorneys on both sides
to the jury; begin direct examination of Everette Sandford Parkins, who was in J-2 MACV
from January 1967 to January 1968);
1753-1798
(Parkins, direct and cross-examination);
1799-1823
(Parkins, cross-, redirect, recross, redirect examination; discussions with judge);
1824-1855
(General Daniel O. Graham, direct examination). A couple of pages seem not to have been
scanned, at the end of this day's transcript.

November 1, 1984. Pages
2057-2093,
2094-2137
(General Graham, cross-examination);
2138-2164
(General Graham, cross- and redirect examination);
2165-2190
(General Graham, redirect examination; direct examination of Robert Leverone, a naval
officer who was with the current intelligence division of MACV from October 1967 to
September 1968);
2191-2229
(Leverone, direct examination).

November 5, 1984. Pages
2231-2263
(Leverone cross-examination; testimony by deposition of Michael Hankins, who had arrived
in Vietnam in 1967 shortly after intelligence training at Fort Holabird,
and began working at the Order of Battle branch at CICV about the
beginning of July, working on NVA infiltration);
2264-2291,
2292-2336,
2337-2356
(Hankins, testimony by deposition);
2357-2399
(attorneys' statements to the jury; direct examination of John Frank Stewart, who began
his Vietnam tour in March 1967, working on II Corps as an analyst in the Current
Intelligence and Indications branch at MACV);
2400-2423
(Stewart, direct examination).

November 7, 1984. Pages
2572-2600
(Colonel John Stewart, cross-examination);
2601-2646
(Stewart, cross- and redirect examination);
2647-2691
(interim summations and attorneys' arguments). If the remaining pages for November 7 have
been placed online, I have not yet located them.

January 9, 1985. Pages
6566-6615 (James P. Johnson, a
Republican member of the U.S. House of Representatives from 1973 to 1981, who had served in the
Select Committee on Intelligence [Pike Committee] from 1975 to 1976), and David C. Morgan,
who had been deputy chief of the order of battle section of U.S. intelligence in Saigon),
6616-6659 (discussion by
attorneys of clips of videotapes, which were played to the jury but not transcribed for the trial
transcript, of statements by Marshall Lynn and George Hamscher; beginning of testimony by
George Hamscher, an intelligence colonel who moved from DIA to CINCPAC in the summer of 1967),
6660-6699,
6700-6716 (Hamscher, continued).

January 10: Pages
6779-6803 (beginning of testimony
by Sam Adams, defendant and former CIA analyst).

January 23, 1985. The witness was George W. Allen, who had been a senior CIA analyst. Pages
7737-7784 and
7785-7826
(direct examination of Allen); pages
7827-7871
(direct examination of Allen concludes, cross-examination begins). There should be
more pages for this date, but I have not located them.

January 28:
8072-8118 (Douglas Parry, continued),
8119-8138 (Parry, continued; John
Dickerson, who worked for CIA January 1964 to January 1968, of which time he was in Saigon December 1965
to November 1967, doing analysis on enemy logistics),
8139-8156 (Paul N. McCloskey, Jr., a
former Marine officer who was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, R-Calif, in a special
election in December 1967, and immediately went on the first of several fact-finding trips to Vietnam),
8159-8187,
8188-8237 (McCloskey, continued),

January 29:
8239-8287 (Ronald Lee Smith, who
had been Sam Adams' boss for a while at CIA),
8288-8327,
8328-8346 (Smith cross-examination),
8347-8365 (John Moore),
8366-8401 (Col. William Cover, who was G-2 of
I Field Force March-August 1966, then was chief of estimates for MACV J-2 August 1966 to March 1967).

January 30:
8403-8445 (Ronald Smith,
cross-examination and redirect),
8446-8494 (Richard Kovar [who
from early 1963 to January 1, 1968, was an executive assistant to the DDI, working mostly on
Vietnam--he was de facto the DDI's special assistant for Vietnam affairs], direct examination),
8495-8521 (Kovar, cross and
redirect examination),
8522-8538 (the running heads
at the tops of the pages claim this is still Kovar, but it isn't; it is testimony by deposition of
Bernard Gattozzi, who arrived in Vietnam in September 1967, and was assigned to J-2 MACV, where he
soon began working on order of battle methodology under Lt. Col. Everette Parkins),
8539-8575 (Gattozzi).

January 31: Pages
8577-8616 (Joseph Clement Stumpf, III, who
had been a CIA analyst, particulary of administrative services),
8617-8653 (Stumpf, continued; interim
summations by attorneys for both sides; begin examination of Greg Rushford, who had been an investigator for the
House Select Committee on Intelligence (Pike Committee) in 1975 and 1976),
8654-8703.

February 4, 1985. The witnesses were: Daniel Friedman, who had served in Vietnam
November 1967 to November 1968, as an armored reconnaissance specialist (11D20)
with Third Platoon, D Troop, 17th Armored Cavalry, 199th Light Infantry Brigade.
Howard Daniel Embree, USMA 1963, who served in Vietnam May 1966 to May 1967 as an
adviser to units of the ARVN 1st Division (4th Battalion of 2nd Regiment, based at Dong Ha, for six
months, then 1st Battalion of 1st Regiment, based at Quang Tri, for six months); he had had
12 weeks of intensive Vietnamese language just before he went. Joseph Fackovec, a
film editor who had worked on "The Uncounted Enemy." Pages
8704-8734
(Friedman);
8735-8775
(Friedman and Embree);
8776-8804
(Fackovec);
8805-8833
(mostly attorneys for Westmoreland reading various materials including excerpts from
the deposition of Howard Stringer of CBS).

February 5, 1985. Witnesses were Colonel Donald Blascak (an Army
intelligence officer who had been working at CIA, under George Carver, from January
1966 to August 1968), and Colonel Russell E. Cooley (who had been Chief of the Enemy
Strength Team, Order of Battle Studies, Order of Battle Branch, Combined Intelligence
Center, Vietnam,
from October 1967 onward. Pages
8835-8869 and
8870-8899
(direct examination of Blascak); pages
8900-8931
(cross-examination, and direct questioning of Blascak by the judge); pages
8932-8980
(redirect examination of Blascak, and testimony by deposition of Colonel Cooley).

February 6, 1985, the day when General Joseph McChristian was
testifying (both direct and cross-examination). Pages
8982-9021,
9022-9046,
9047-9082,
9083-9120, and
9121-9141.
McChristian had headed U.S. military intelligence in Vietnam from 1965 to 1967.

February 11, 1985. Major Michael Dilley, who as a junior
intelligence officer, had served in the political order of battle section of the
Combined Intelligence Center, Vietnam, September 1966 to September 1967. Pages
9339-9386
(Major Michael Dilley direct examination),
9387-9414
(Major Dilley direct and cross-examination),
9415-9441
(Major Dilley cross- and redirect examination, another segment of Colonel Cooley's
testimony by deposition, and arguments over admissability of testimony of a guy named
Olsen).

February 12, 1985. Pages
9443-9487
(the last portion of Colonel Cooley's testimony by deposition), followed by pages
9488-9537 and
9538-9566
(direct examination of Colonel Gains Hawkins).

February 13, 1985. Pages
9568-9601
(lawyers' arguments over Hawkins' testimony), followed by
9602-9633 and
9634-9679
(cross-examination of Colonel Gains Hawkins), followed by
9680-9709,
(direct examination of Norman R. House, an Army intelligence officer who arrived in
Vietnam in August 1967, worked briefly in the estimates branch of the Current Intelligence
Indication and Estimates Division (CIIED),
then was in charge of the I Corps ground order of battle section at CICV, then on
15 February 1968 went to MACV Forward at Phu Bai),
9710-9734
(cross-examination and redirect examination of Norman House).

Robert N. Ginsburgh to Walt Rostow,
"VC/NVA Order of Battle in SVN,"
2 November 1966. 3 pp. Includes table breaking down estimated strength into confirmed, probable,
and possible, and maps showing estimated locations. Ginsburgh was a colonel serving on the NSC
staff as a JCS liaison officer.

Samuel Adams,
"Viet Cong Irregular Strength", 7 November 1966. There were
originally two attachments, but only one of these, "The Strength of the Viet Cong Irregulars," 8 September 1966 [also by Samuel Adams,
though his name is not on it],
is included in this online file. The other, COMUSMACV Report number 6 075 7739 66, 18 October 1966, (written by the American
S-2 Advisory Team in Quang Tin Province), would be worth locating.

Walt Rostow to President Johnson, January 20, 1967,
Memorandum 6-3-37. Rostow informed President Johnson that in the fourth quarter of 1966, U.S. intelligence figures showed
both Viet Cong main force units and North Vietnamese forces in South Vietnam to have declined in strength. (He attached a table
of figures from "OSD sources," showing a greater decline in enemy strenght than was shown in the MACV OB Summary.)

Wheeler to Westmoreland, 20 January 1967,
CJCS 0547-67. (JX669). Wheeler in concerned about inconsistencies in the ways data on infiltration, and Order of Battle,
are reported. (Wheeler's concern appears to have been the impetus for the February 1967 conference in Hawaii--see below.)

Report of the Conference to Standardize Methods for Developing and Presenting Statistics on
Order of Battle Information Trends and Estimates. Pacific Command, 21 Feb 1967 (the conference
had been hosted by Pacific Command, 6-11 February 1967). ii, 30 pp. plus five annexes paginated separately. A sixth
annex was issued as a separate document rather than as a part of this one--see below.
Front matter, pp. 1-30, Annexes A-CAnnex C (continued) to Annex E.

CIA to Saigon, 2 June 1967. Responding to
Saigon 7423. Samuel Adams
to Louis Sandine, rejecting the idea of dropping the Self Defense and Secret Self Defense Forces from the Order of Battle. JX 239, JX 239B.

Robert N. Ginsburgh,
Memorandum for Mr. Rostow, 18 August 1967. Ginsburgh
reports that an agreement on the current order of battle seems imminent, and that it will be necessary to release
retroactively adjusted figures for past years, so the new current figures can be accurately understood in perspective. He gives
tables indicating what the current and retroactive figures are likely to look like. His retroactive table, apparently
compiled by DIA, shows SD declining from 120,000 in December 1964 to 95,000 in July 1967, and SSD from 30,000 to 25,000.

Jim Jones, memo, 8/19/67, summarizing President Johnson's
meeting 8/18/67 with Rusk, McNamara, Wheeler, and Rostow. Mostly on bombing of North Vietnam, but some at the end on the strain
on enemy forces.

Sharp to Wheeler, 262115Z Aug 1967, "Revision on Enemy
OB Strength," (date stamp
28 Aug 1967 looks like when it was received somewhere, not when sent). Sharp endorses Westmoreland's message COMUSMACV 8068/251130Z
Aug 67. There must be no mention of SD and SSD; if these are mentioned, then readers of the new figures will construct for
themselves what the new figures would have been if SD and SSD had been included. JX 777.

Westmoreland to Deputy Ambassador Eugene M. Locke,
Measurements of Progress, EMBTEL 7867,
14 October 1967. Reply, apparently written by MACOI and signed by Westmoreland, to Locke's request of 10/07/67 for
information backing up statements in EMBTEL 7867. A lot of this is refutation of a Newsweek article
"Their Lions - Our Rabbits". US and GVN KIA figures for April to August 1967, with CIDG and National Police
included in the GVN figure, should be compared with other statistics. Has cover letter with which Locke sent it
to Walt Rostow 10/26/67.

Harold Kaplan to Walt Rostow, November 9, 1967.
Secretary of Defense McNamara seems to want the revised Order of Battle figures released quickly. Kaplan is concerned that the
figures be released in a way that will avoid unfavorable publicity.

[William Hyland? signature not very legible],
"Vietnamese Communist OB,", received by SAVA 24 Nov 67. A table,
obtained from DIA, of the retroactive figures Westmoreland was using in his background briefing of the press [it looked like a
regular briefing, not background, in Neil Sheehan's article about it, New York Times, November 23, 1967, pp. 1, 2].

MACV Briefing on Enemy Order of Battle,
November 24, 1967. 9 pp. A summary, released to the press, of the revised estimate of enemy strength that had appeared
in the October Order of Battle Summary (above) and in Special National Intelligence Estimate 14.3-67, of November 13, 1967. JX 277.

Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Daniel Z. Henkin, to Director, CIA (Attn: George Carver),
"MACV Press Briefing on Enemy Order of Battle," October 10, 1967.
(JX263). A draft that had already been accepted by ASD(PA), COMUSMACV, and Robert Komer. Henkin asked for CIA comment or concurrence.

Paul V. Walsh to George Carver (SAVA),
"MACV Press Briefing on Enemy Order of Battle", 11 October 1967.
(JX 265A.) Walsh objected very strongly to the draft MACV press briefing. Walsh said
it gave the impression that in the past the United States had overestimated guerrilla strength.

CINCPAC to JCS, "Year-End Review of Vietnam," 010156Z Jan 68.
The text. Said that the balance had
shifted against the Communist forces "to an extent which denies the enemy the capability to conduct
significant operations in the populated areas." (p. 2)

CINCPAC,
"Measurement of Progress in Southeast Asia, as of 31 December 1967." Commander in Chief, Pacific,
CINCPAC SER: 00404 - 68. 23 February 1968. A quarterly report covering the last quarter of 1967.
Front matter and pp. 1-40.

SAVA (George Carver) to [CIA] Saigon,
Director 75802, 18 February 1968. (JX 296A.) Carver
thinks the CIA should re-open the arguments that had been made in 1967 about dropping categories from Order of Battle.

CIA Director 762 to [CIA] Saigon, 200044Z Feb 1968,
Ref: [CIA] Saigon 8836. CIA Headquarters says that the MACV study "Cost and Impact upon Enemy of Tet Offensive" is exaggerating
the impact of the Tet Offensive on enemy forces. The MACV OB at the end of January was seriously underestimating enemy forces,
so subtracting enemy losses since that time from that OB will produce an invalid result. The MACV OB omitted a lot of the units
that participated in the Tet Offensive. JX 297A. A draft of this message
dated February 19 is also available.

CINCPAC,
"Measurement of Progress in Southeast Asia as of 31 Dec 1967." CINCPAC Ser: 00404-68, 23 February 1968. The
estimate on p. 9 that VC/NVA strength had declined 22% in 1967 is ironic in retrospect.
Front matter and pp. 1-40 (less than
half the total report).

Robert N. Ginsburgh to Walt Rostow,
Enemy Order of Battle, 28 February 1968. Ginsburgh
gave his personal estimate of changes in enemy strength since October 1967.
Cover Memo with which Rostow forwarded Ginsburgh's memo
to President Johnson, with the comment "His estimating record in the past has been good."

Robert N. Ginsburgh to Walt Rostow,
Order of Battle, 20 March 1968. DX 929.

Robert N. Ginsburgh to Walt Rostow,
Enemy Order of Battle, 27 March 1968. The CIA is
currently giving a substantially higher estimate than the DIA for enemy combat forces in South Vietnam. A lot of the
difference traces back to differences in the figures for past strength. DIA assumes that enemy strength in November 1967 was 118,000,
the figure on which the intelligence community agreed at that time. The CIA now thinks the figure was 142,000 in November 1967.

[John Huizenga? Abbot Smith?],
"1967's Estimative Record—Five Years Later",
CIA Office of National Estimates, 16 August 1972. 34 pp. Released (sanitized) in 2015. This study takes a very vague, and very benign, view of the
OB controversy.